9 ms·

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an ave

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind-can-meet-world-energy-demand-100-times-over-renewables/ https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind-can-meet-world-ener... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26928343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26928343 Storage is a component, but renewables will get so cheap we'll overbuild and throw away (curtail) the excess versus optimizing for storage. The world has sufficient lithium reserves for storage and EV demands.
- edhelas 5y ago
  Sure :) 500B€ (yes, half a trillion !) invested in wind turbines in Germany over 20 years. Check the result https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE, Germany is ~300g of CO²/kwh, France is 50g. Why ? Because when there is no wind, no sun, you need power. And then you're burning gaz or coal. So you "erase" all those 0CO² days. Also solar panel efficiency fades over time, you loose 50% of efficiency after a few decades. Wind-turbines have 25y life expectancy.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I thought it was because Germany shut down its nuclear power plants and ramped its coal generation up? [1] Germany poorly managing its power grid doesn’t imply that renewables aren’t economically rational; it implies Germany makes irrational national policy. France is primarily nuclear powered, as you point out with their low CO2 emission footprint (compare the generation mixes of both countries in ElectricityMap, I’m familiar having contributed generation data for Europe). Solar panels retain 90% of their production rating after 25 years, and can be recycled at end of life, as can wind turbine blades (with the turbines repowered, typically generating more power than the previous equipment). What’s with the FUD? Definitely feels like there’s an agenda when the data is objectively clear. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-power-and-deadly-emissions-spiked/ https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-power-a...
    - coryrc 5y ago
      How I look at it, had they spent the same amount of money in a different way, they could be carbon neutral. Climate change is an emergency but no one is acting like it. It's one thing to say "we don't think it's worth the money" and another to spend the money but not achieve much, it's even worse IMO!
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        > Climate change is an emergency but no one is acting like it. Yes, it sometimes makes me wonder what the real agenda is.
    - Someone 5y ago
      Wind turbine blade recycling is hard. I wouldn’t call it a proven technology. For example, all recycling options discussed in https://designedconscious.com/plastics-in-the-ocean/sustainability-news-stories/is-fiberglass-recyclable-who-is-recycling-fiberglass https://designedconscious.com/plastics-in-the-ocean/sustaina... are into inferior products (shorter glass fibers, ash, etc)
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        I think this notion of recycling turbine blades is a bit of a fetish. Why do they have to be recycled?
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Germany's fossil fuel use for grid generation was steady after Fukushima. Coal use declined. After 2017, coal use fell off a cliff (as CO2 allowances became more expensive in Europe.)
  - the_why_of_y 5y ago
    > Also solar panel efficiency fades over time, you loose 50% of efficiency after a few decades. Perhaps it's more relevant that the solar panels that were installed decades ago were 50% less efficient; that's technological progress. https://sites.lafayette.edu/egrs352-sp14-pv/technology/history-of-pv-technology/ https://sites.lafayette.edu/egrs352-sp14-pv/technology/histo... Progress that was enabled substantially by there being a market that would buy the early inefficient solar panels, providing capital for further research.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
I run the utilities at night because electricity is cheaper then. I'd run them during the day if I had solar.
hh3k0 5y ago
> Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. It sure would be nice if we had a transnational energy infrastructure, as the sun is always shining somewhere. Think DESERTEC and Gobitec but for the whole planet.
- edhelas 5y ago
  Oh yes, thousands of km of high power copper cables. Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India ! And for wind, it's the same issue, when there is wind in Finland, there is wind in Spain. So you can't "balance thing" between countries.
  - hh3k0 5y ago
    > Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India ! From the DESERTEC website: > For long transmission distances direct current transmission is superior to alternating current. Alternating current has high losses due to capacitive and inductive resistance, which do not occur in direct current transmission. With that technology, a 3000 km line (for example Cairo to Munich) has losses lower than 10%.
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      That would be high reactive losses due to unbalanced inductive and capacitive reactance in an ac load.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Power lines don't use copper. They're aluminum with a steel core.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    If the energy is practically free from the sun then 30% loss can be manageable if that's the cost of renewable reliable energy. Heck coal is only about 44% efficient to begin with and we currently accept that loss.
lbotos 5y ago
I was interested in what it takes to recycle a Li-ion cell and this was a pretty good overview for others: https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-recycling-lithium/97/i28 https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re... It's expensive now to recycle, and according to the article, the costs don't drop to recycle because if it's cheaper to dig up ore vs. recycle, well, the business doesn't exist.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Redwood Materials, founded by JB Straubel (Tesla co-founder and previously CTO), is working on this problem. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/
ggm 5y ago
> There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way. Julian Simon's bet with Paul Ehrlich. You're not apparently aware of the amount of lithium worldwide, it's availability or its price trajectory. All minerals are significantly more abundant than people think, supply chain dynamics in mining do no equate to scarcity on earth, they relate to the economics of exploration and extraction and shipping. I'll make an exception for pink diamonds. Lithium is not in 10 year decline. Lithium is also not the only battery mineral of interest and battery tech is not stand and die on lithium for either cost, or energy density, or recharge speed.
- edhelas 5y ago
  Sure, we have plenty of minerals left ! But where and how much energy you need to extract them. In France we have lithium in Alsace, we could dig-it-up, but it's really not worth it energy wise and environmentally wise.
  - ggm 5y ago
    http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
  - edhelas 5y ago
    2010 blog article ? https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/16/how-long-will-the-lithium-supply-last/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/16/how-long-will-the-lit... > The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100. If the same policies and number of cars were matched with just 26 Mt of lithium, but recycling efforts would only grow slowly, battery manufacturers will close shops even before 2040.
    - ggm 5y ago
      3billion cars. Exhausted at 2010 extraction rates by 2100 so in 80 years not 10, and for 3 billion cars, and that's from resource availability figures from 11 years ago. Please, don't do this. You said 10 years. It's not exhausted in 10 years and a mining report from 2010 doesn't tell you anything in 2021. Mines are developed when economics justify it. Available lithium is huge.
speedgoose 5y ago
While the battery of an EV is heavy, there is not 500kg of lithium inside it. For example a Tesla S with 100kWh, one of the biggest battery on the market, has about 7kg of lithium.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind-can-meet-world-energy-demand-100-times-over-renewables/ https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind-can-meet-world-ener... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26928343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26928343 Storage is a component, but renewables will get so cheap we'll overbuild and throw away (curtail) the excess versus optimizing for storage. The world has sufficient lithium reserves for storage and EV demands.

edhelas 5y ago
Sure :) 500B€ (yes, half a trillion !) invested in wind turbines in Germany over 20 years. Check the result https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE, Germany is ~300g of CO²/kwh, France is 50g. Why ? Because when there is no wind, no sun, you need power. And then you're burning gaz or coal. So you "erase" all those 0CO² days. Also solar panel efficiency fades over time, you loose 50% of efficiency after a few decades. Wind-turbines have 25y life expectancy.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I thought it was because Germany shut down its nuclear power plants and ramped its coal generation up? [1] Germany poorly managing its power grid doesn’t imply that renewables aren’t economically rational; it implies Germany makes irrational national policy. France is primarily nuclear powered, as you point out with their low CO2 emission footprint (compare the generation mixes of both countries in ElectricityMap, I’m familiar having contributed generation data for Europe). Solar panels retain 90% of their production rating after 25 years, and can be recycled at end of life, as can wind turbine blades (with the turbines repowered, typically generating more power than the previous equipment). What’s with the FUD? Definitely feels like there’s an agenda when the data is objectively clear. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-power-and-deadly-emissions-spiked/ https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-power-a...
  - coryrc 5y ago
    How I look at it, had they spent the same amount of money in a different way, they could be carbon neutral. Climate change is an emergency but no one is acting like it. It's one thing to say "we don't think it's worth the money" and another to spend the money but not achieve much, it's even worse IMO!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      > Climate change is an emergency but no one is acting like it. Yes, it sometimes makes me wonder what the real agenda is.
  - Someone 5y ago
    Wind turbine blade recycling is hard. I wouldn’t call it a proven technology. For example, all recycling options discussed in https://designedconscious.com/plastics-in-the-ocean/sustainability-news-stories/is-fiberglass-recyclable-who-is-recycling-fiberglass https://designedconscious.com/plastics-in-the-ocean/sustaina... are into inferior products (shorter glass fibers, ash, etc)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      I think this notion of recycling turbine blades is a bit of a fetish. Why do they have to be recycled?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Germany's fossil fuel use for grid generation was steady after Fukushima. Coal use declined. After 2017, coal use fell off a cliff (as CO2 allowances became more expensive in Europe.)
- the_why_of_y 5y ago
  > Also solar panel efficiency fades over time, you loose 50% of efficiency after a few decades. Perhaps it's more relevant that the solar panels that were installed decades ago were 50% less efficient; that's technological progress. https://sites.lafayette.edu/egrs352-sp14-pv/technology/history-of-pv-technology/ https://sites.lafayette.edu/egrs352-sp14-pv/technology/histo... Progress that was enabled substantially by there being a market that would buy the early inefficient solar panels, providing capital for further research.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

I run the utilities at night because electricity is cheaper then. I'd run them during the day if I had solar.

hh3k0 5y ago

> Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. It sure would be nice if we had a transnational energy infrastructure, as the sun is always shining somewhere. Think DESERTEC and Gobitec but for the whole planet.

edhelas 5y ago
Oh yes, thousands of km of high power copper cables. Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India ! And for wind, it's the same issue, when there is wind in Finland, there is wind in Spain. So you can't "balance thing" between countries.
- hh3k0 5y ago
  > Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India ! From the DESERTEC website: > For long transmission distances direct current transmission is superior to alternating current. Alternating current has high losses due to capacitive and inductive resistance, which do not occur in direct current transmission. With that technology, a 3000 km line (for example Cairo to Munich) has losses lower than 10%.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    That would be high reactive losses due to unbalanced inductive and capacitive reactance in an ac load.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Power lines don't use copper. They're aluminum with a steel core.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  If the energy is practically free from the sun then 30% loss can be manageable if that's the cost of renewable reliable energy. Heck coal is only about 44% efficient to begin with and we currently accept that loss.

lbotos 5y ago

I was interested in what it takes to recycle a Li-ion cell and this was a pretty good overview for others: https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-recycling-lithium/97/i28 https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re... It's expensive now to recycle, and according to the article, the costs don't drop to recycle because if it's cheaper to dig up ore vs. recycle, well, the business doesn't exist.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Redwood Materials, founded by JB Straubel (Tesla co-founder and previously CTO), is working on this problem. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/

ggm 5y ago

> There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way. Julian Simon's bet with Paul Ehrlich. You're not apparently aware of the amount of lithium worldwide, it's availability or its price trajectory. All minerals are significantly more abundant than people think, supply chain dynamics in mining do no equate to scarcity on earth, they relate to the economics of exploration and extraction and shipping. I'll make an exception for pink diamonds. Lithium is not in 10 year decline. Lithium is also not the only battery mineral of interest and battery tech is not stand and die on lithium for either cost, or energy density, or recharge speed.

edhelas 5y ago
Sure, we have plenty of minerals left ! But where and how much energy you need to extract them. In France we have lithium in Alsace, we could dig-it-up, but it's really not worth it energy wise and environmentally wise.
- ggm 5y ago
  http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
- edhelas 5y ago
  2010 blog article ? https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/16/how-long-will-the-lithium-supply-last/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/16/how-long-will-the-lit... > The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100. If the same policies and number of cars were matched with just 26 Mt of lithium, but recycling efforts would only grow slowly, battery manufacturers will close shops even before 2040.
  - ggm 5y ago
    3billion cars. Exhausted at 2010 extraction rates by 2100 so in 80 years not 10, and for 3 billion cars, and that's from resource availability figures from 11 years ago. Please, don't do this. You said 10 years. It's not exhausted in 10 years and a mining report from 2010 doesn't tell you anything in 2021. Mines are developed when economics justify it. Available lithium is huge.

speedgoose 5y ago

While the battery of an EV is heavy, there is not 500kg of lithium inside it. For example a Tesla S with 100kWh, one of the biggest battery on the market, has about 7kg of lithium.